Two schoolchildren 'seriously injured' as knifeman goes on rampage at German school
Two young girls on their way to school have been attacked by a man wielding a knife in southwestern Germany.
Two teenage girls have been left severely injured after a man attacked them on their way to school before fleeing into a residential building in Illerkirchberg, a town of around 5,000 people west of Munich, Germany. The police confirmed that a man had been arrested but declined to provide any further information until an investigation is underway. The two girls, believed to be 13 and 14-years-old, were found by local residents after the attacker absconded. All those within the building into which the attacker ran, which was an accommodation house for refugees, have been taken into custody, the police confirmed.
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Wolfgang Juergens, spokesperson for police in the German city of Ulm, told a local broadcaster that the suspect had fled to a nearby building before they had arrived.
The police found the two severely injured girls lying on the street; after trying to stabilise them, they were rushed off to hospital.
No motive for the attack has been discovered yet.
"Everything further will come out of the ongoing investigation," Mr Juergens said.
According to the police, the children were on their way to a bus in a neighbouring community that would take them to their secondary school.
Following the attack, the police surrounded a building where the suspect was believed to be hiding. They stormed the site and arrested all residents.
It is unclear whether the children and the perpetrator knew each other or if the attack was random.
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Investigations are now underway and the crime scene has been closed off to the public, according to the UIlm police.
Pictures of the aftermath show a group of police officers in white overalls examining the scene.
Several police cars and men in bulletproof vests can be seen parked on the nearby road.
The attack appears to have happened down a backroad in a residential neighbourhood.
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Just over a year ago, three people were seriously injured in a knife attack on a high-speed train in southern Germany.
The suspect was a 27-year-old Syrian man who had been granted refugee status after entering Germany in 2014 and was suffering from “psychological problems”.
Though nobody was seriously injured, the incident sparked concern within Germany in relation to the 2015 migrant crisis during which then-Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country's doors to some 900,000 asylum-seekers.
Only a few months before the train attack, a Somali immigrant fatally stabbed three women in the city of Wurzburg, near Frankfurt.
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